Notes

Meeting minutes

Written by Evelyn Mitchell and Kevin Altis

Kevin Altis would like to see a 10x increase in the Python user-base in the
next 2 years.
Promoting Python
leverage evangelism
(what are the tenets of evangelism)
website is very high visibility
- don't have phone number or press contact
I suggest that people interested in learning more about effective evangelism
watch and read what Guy Kawasaki has to say on the subject. All of his books
are quite readable, pretty short, and contain many amusing anecdotes. See
the link below for more info; the signal to noise ratio is very good. [ka]
http://pythonology.org/pipermail/marketing-python/2003-March/001124.html
The main point about the website is that since we don't have traditional
marketing and PR dollars, nor do we have normal phone and email contacts for
people to get immediate answers about Python, the website needs to do that
work for us. The site is the face of Python to the rest of the world. [ka]
Who is the customer?
people who don't use python today
people who do use python today
- information source
lots of different types of customers
identify use cases for groups of users
We need to establish metrics
track usage
to ensure modifications that are improvements
Adoption rate of python
increase in traffic and new users of python
By establishing some metrics in the web site stats such as total unique IP
addresses, page views, and downloads per month, etc. we can see how our
"popularity" is growing. Metrics should also tell us whether some of the
"improvements" made to the site really did what we thought they would or
ended up having a negative impact on usage. That way we aren't just guessing
and modifying blindly. [ka]
Not focused on technical solutions
identify problems
identify customers
how are people using website
what is missing
what are websites we like
(similar customer bases)
At the Open Space, I didn't want to focus on the technical issues of
implementing the site, but that conversation is okay to carry on in parallel
here on the list. [ka]
Kevin is comfortable with the site redesign process
Product
Mockups
templates
estimate work to estimate effort
Before implementing any actual changes, we should make templates and mockups
to get feedback before making the changes live. [ka]
Current implementation problems
No database backend
I expect Aahz, Steve, Thomas, and other pydotorg maintainers to articulate
the current problems they have maintaining the site, time sinks, and ideas
for where we might make site maintenance easier and improve their lives. :)
[ka]
Make recommendations to current web maintainers and PSF members
Process
establish a working group empowered to make changes to the website
the website is owned by PSF
That's what this mailing list is about. [ka]
Problems
ownership of domain
clarifying process to change website
get authority delegated from PSF to implement changes
Opportunities
Recommendations
5-6 people
balanced between management and implementation
Where is the effort to do the work going to come from
Ongoing management is required to ensure that maintenance on an ongoing
basis gets done
Behind
job postings that don't get uploaded
50% of the mail to webmaster doesn't get answered
webmaster workflow
multiple responses
Personnel
Who is available to do work
How much time do they have
What are the skill sets
Split off the PR effort from the language development effort
Introducing Python Video
done
Appeal to the people who have the skills that are required
Audience
People who don't use python today
recommendation from another source
resource for further information
Advanced developers
defectors
journalists who are trying to get more information
Managers (tool selection)
teachers
python core team PythonLabs
python contributors (community)
newbies (programming newbies) non-programmers
community of exiting python users
job seekers
event page
books
user group
trainers
What is python
How do I start doing python
Metrics
identify customers
python in business
teaching/learning python
then track traffic to the sub pages to discover customers
wide diversity
more general launching page
home page is too complicated
home page
asking "what were you looking for. Did you find it"
search - used to determine what they were looking form
Analysis of search term metrics
will be difficult because the access to the log is hard to get.
We still have assets at CNRI
seach.cnri
Anyone interested in joining the python.org maintenance team
Aahz says the team members are restricted to well known community
members
Give the appearance of needing help
Give the appearance of being open to joining
Look for volunteers
Specific specialized areas of responsibility
Python in education
Kirby Urner for the edu-sig/Python in Education pages can be our test case
of having page or section maintainers not directly involved in the
maintenance of the rest of python.org. [ka]
py.org experience
Zope3
ht to html still works well
Wiki
Needs a strong editor
Which maintenances take the most time
Where is the time going now?
job listings
add a form to allow for posting jobs
add a secure form to allow for removing jobs
event listings
add a form to allow for posting events
broken links
webmaster mail
help@python.org ->tutor
reflector (a static page of suggestions)
Jeff Eppler to work with Steve to do the PyCon website
Credit card donations
Paypal
ShareIt
donate.python.org
python.org needs a certificate
40% Documentation is the number one hit
RDF file is also getting a lot of hits
750000 hits
unique IPs in march 180,000
http://www.python.org/wwwstats
Similar sites
php.net
mysql.com
postgresql.org
Web site computer resources are adequate for current needs
10% load on the machine
hot backup could be provided
Continuing the discussion
PSF board meetings
forming a subcommittee or group of volunteers to carry on the work
downloads of documentation
faster to have unified download page
too confusing
"Get Python Now"
Make the download of documentation very straightforward
Matrix of choices
python.org SIG design mailing list -> next action
reimplementing SIGs
pythonology.org
a good new user site
only if the support of the pages will come from the original author